Indian Palaeography from about B.C. 350 to about A.D. 1300 c2.13

c2.13

In respect of the Ēraṇ coin, mentioned first on page 8, which presents a reversed Brāhmī legend running from right to left, we must not lose sight of the possibility that the explanation is to be found, as has been suggested by Professor Hultzsch in the “Indian Antiquary,” Vol. XXVI, p. 336, in a mistake of the engraver of the die, who, like the die-sinker in the case of a certain coin of Hōlkar of the last century, may have forgotten that he ought to reverse the legend on the die itself. We have one instance of such remissness in ancient times in a coin of Rajula-Rājuvūla, the reverse of which presents a monogram, formed of the Greek letters E and Y, facing in the wrong direction; see Professor Gardner’s Catalogue of the Coins of the Greek and Scythic Kings of Bactria and India, p. 67, No. 5. And we have another in the legend on a bronze stamp for making seals, where the engraver omitted to reverse the syllable *śrī*; see J.RAS. 1901, 98, plate, No. 9.